


Elevation

by Satine86



Series: Elevator AU [1]
Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Comfort, Developing Relationship, F/M, Gen, Panic Attacks, Romance, Trapped In Elevator, Tumblr Prompt, this is just full romcom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 22:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15828312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satine86/pseuds/Satine86
Summary: The elevator jolted to a full stop as the lights went out. They both stumbled back against the wall, gripping the handrails to stay upright. There was a long pause as they held their breath and waited. The elevator didn’t move again, but the emergency lights came on.“That’s not good,” Anne whispered.





	Elevation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kagee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kagee/gifts), [one_way_ride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_way_ride/gifts).



> This was supposed to be a simple prompt fill. I failed. 
> 
> One-way-ride prompted: a cuddle between strangers  
> Kagee prompted: between strangers + out of necessity

“Wait!” Anne cried, putting on another burst of speed as she raced across the lobby, kitten heels clacking with each step. 

Honestly, she should have stuck with the flats. Then again if she had known when she’d gotten dressed that morning that she would end up stuck in the middle of an accident while en route to her interview, she would have forgone the pencil skirt and heels altogether and chosen the dress pants instead.

But hindsight and all that. 

She skidded into the elevator just before the doors started to slid shut again. Letting out a breath as she leaned against the wall, and was surprised to find the elevator otherwise empty aside from a bemused looking young man. 

“What floor?” he asked. 

Anne looked up into startling blue eyes and tried to remember the number. “Um, eighteen. Thank you.” 

“No problem.” He hit the number and the elevator jolted to a start. “Running late?” he asked. 

“Trying not to.” Anne attempted to smooth out her skirt and blazer, wanting to look as presentable as possible. “There was an accident so I was stuck. I have an interview.” 

“Oh, with who?” 

Anne tried to take a good look at him then without being too overt. He was quite handsome, she thought, highly polished in a well tailored charcoal suit. He kept his eyes on the numbers as the elevator zoomed past the floors, his hands in his pockets. All in all in he seemed affable enough. Although answering a string of questions from a stranger didn’t exactly put her at ease.

“I’m sorry,” he added when he noticed her hesitancy. “I work in the building. I know a lot of people. Especially the department heads.” 

“I see. I don’t actually know who I’m interviewing with today. They just called me in for a second interview.” 

“Well if you’re going to eighteen you–” 

Whatever he was about to say was cut short as the elevator jolted to a full stop as the lights went out. They both stumbled back against the wall, gripping the handrails to stay upright. There was a long pause as they held their breath and waited. The elevator didn’t move again, but the emergency lights came on. 

“That’s not good,” Anne whispered. 

He didn’t reply, but instead hit the emergency button. A grainy voice sounded through the speaker immediately.

“Yeah?”

“Uh, what was that?” 

“The thing is…” The voice trailed off, hesitant. “We don’t really know.” 

“What do you mean you don’t know, Charles?” 

“I mean there’s a glitch in the system. We’re trying to trace it back to the source so we can override it. Until then none of the elevators are working.” 

With that news the young man rested his head against the panel and sighed. “You mean other people are trapped?”

“Unfortunately yes.” 

“Charles,” he said firmly. A warning. “Please get this fixed as soon as possible.” 

“We’re on it, Phillip. Try not to worry too much.”

He gave an overly fake laugh. “You’re so funny.” 

The line went dead, and the man – Phillip – turned around to look at her, face apologetic. Then a thought seem to come to him and he pulled his phone out of the inside of his jacket.

“Thank god, there’s a signal.” He started typing something.

“What are you doing?”

“I am informing them to reschedule your interview. Seeing as I doubt you’ll make it anytime soon. Sorry about that, by the way.” He looked up at her when he was finished. “And done. They’ll be expecting you whenever we get the hell out of here.” 

Anne frowned. “Wait, you can just do that?” 

He looked apologetic again. “Yeah. I mean I could just tell them to give you the job, you’re the call back for the HR possession right? Lettie thought you were more than qualified. I don’t even know why they’re doing a second interview.” He shrugged. 

Now she was just confused. Anne eyed him askance, incredulous. “Who are you?” 

“Oh. Um. Phillip.” He pointed at himself. “Carlyle.” 

At that Anne let her eyes go wide in surprise. “You mean Carlyle like the name on the building?” 

“Yeah.” He flashed her a shy smile. 

“Oh my god.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Is that why–is this your  _private_  elevator? As the big cheese?” She could feel her cheeks starting to get warm. All this and there was no way of escape. Fantastic. 

“A... a little bit, yeah.” He held up his thumb and forefinger. “But you’ve saved me from being trapped by myself, so that’s a good thing.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I’m not overly fond of small spaces.” 

“You’re claustrophobic?” 

“Little bit.” He held up his thumb and forefinger again. 

She more closely inspected him at that; the way he kept shifting his weight, one polished shoe tapping erratically on the floor. His hands kept moving from his pants pockets to fiddle with the buttons on his jacket, and his eyes were slightly pinched at the corners. His questions made a lot more sense, he hadn’t been prying. He had been distracting himself. 

“Can I ask why you take the elevator then?” 

He shrugged, cleared his throat. “More convenient. It’s a weird habit, but usually if I watch the floors go by it’s not so bad. Although that’s difficult to do when they’re stuck.” 

Anne giggled a little. “Well, like you said you’re not alone. I have lots of practice being very distracting. Just ask my older brother.” She paused, held out her hand. “I’m Anne, by the way. Anne Wheeler.” 

“Nice to meet you, Miss Wheeler.” He went to shake her hand, then held up his. “Sweaty palms, sorry.” 

“You really are nervous, aren’t you?” 

“Oh, yeah. If I weren’t talking to you right now, I would probably be in the middle of a full blown panic attack.” As it was he loosened his tie, undid the top button of his crisp white dress shirt. 

“I’m sure it will be fine, Mister Carlyle. Like the technician said, it’s a glitch in the system.” 

“You know,” he said slowly, giving her a discerning look, “given the situation we could probably be on a first name basis. I also, uh, hate being called ‘Mister Carlyle.’ Makes me think of my father.” His face soured.

“That bad, huh?” Anne tilted her head.

“That bad.” 

“Okay, first names it is. Phillip.” She smiled at him, and tried not to think about the fact he could very well end up her boss’s boss’s boss. God, what a day this was. 

“Thank you, Anne.” He was obviously still a little on edge, his shoulders tense, still shifting his weight from foot to foot, but he did manage a small smile. It softened his face considerably. 

Anne wondered why he had to be _so_  handsome. 

“You mentioned you have a brother? Are you two close?” Phillip asked. 

“Yeah, we are. There was a big enough age difference that we didn’t try to kill each other. Too often.” 

That got him to laugh. He had a nice laugh. 

“Does he live in the city as well?” 

“He does. W.D. went to school here, and I kinda fell in love with it when my parents and I would visit. So I moved out here for college too.” 

He nodded at that. “I don’t mean to pry either I’m just--”

“You’re distracting yourself. It’s okay, Phillip.” Anne gave him an encouraging nod. It really was. Somehow it didn’t feel like he was overstepping. Maybe it was just because he seemed so genuine. “What about you? Any siblings?” 

“No. Only child. But I always wondered what it would be like to have a sibling.” 

Anne didn’t think it was something she should comment on out loud, but she struck by how lonely he looked when he said that. She tried to mentally catalog what she knew about Phillip Carlyle, the CEO. 

A bit of a wunderkind, he had a natural knack for marketing and PR, his company seemingly taking off overnight. Now he was named with a lot of the social elite. But that was about as much as the public knew. He was usually a bit of a recluse. Although she was thankful he didn’t seem to be the Howard Hughes of their generation. 

She supposed she had always imagined someone a little brasher, a little more outspoken. Not this reserved, nearly shy man currently attempting to avoid a panic attack. Something about the whole thing was oddly endearing. 

The speaker in the elevator crackled to life, the grainy voice returning. “Phil?”

He hit the button. “Yeah?”

“I have good news and bad news.” 

“Oh, god,” he mumbled. “Okay. Go.” 

“Good news is that we have found the problem. The bad news is that it’s going to be a while.” 

A long suffering sigh. Anne could relate. “How long, Charles?” 

“An hour... or two?” A long pause. “You okay, boss?” 

Phillip glanced back at Anne then, with a look she couldn’t quite place. “Yeah, I am,” he said. 

“If you start freaking out we could always try to come in through the hatch?” 

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine. Besides that sounds incredibly dangerous.” His voice hitched up at the end, likely imagining exactly what all that would entail. From people descending the elevator shaft, to him ascending it. She had to agree with him on that regard. 

“All right. We’ll get this done as quickly as possible, I promise.” The line went did again and Phillip leaned back against the wall, hands in a white knuckled grip on the rail. 

Anne decided since they were in it for the long haul, she might as well be comfortable. So she pried off the annoying kitten heels and sank down to the floor, legs curling under her. After a moment Phillip mimicked her, legs stretched out in front of him. 

“So, Phillip,” she said, “would you like to hear the story about when I begged my brother to install an aerial hoop in our backyard after we went to see the circus?” 

“How did that go?” he asked carefully, clearly amused. 

“It probably would have gone better had he not used a hula hoop.”

That earned a real laugh from Phillip. One that finally seemed to let him relax a little, and brought a smile to his face. Bright, happy, and utterly distracting. 

***

Over an hour into their wait, and things hadn’t been too terrible. Surprisingly. Thankfully. It was easy to talk to Anne, she was funny and engaging and had a hundred stories that kept him on his toes. 

They had spread out slightly, Philip long ago discarding his suit jacket and tie, and rolling the sleeves of his shirt up when it started to get too warm. Anne had done the same, removing the short, plain blazer she wore and let it fall next to his. He tried not to stare at her now exposed arms, the silky blouse she wore underneath clinging to her figure. He tried not to stare when she went fishing around in her purse, lips drawn into an adorable pout. He tried not to stare when she finally found the hair tie and pins she had been looking for, and quickly started to pull back the strands of her curly hair -- he tried not to think about how soft her hair looked, or how he briefly caught the scent of her shampoo. He certainly tried not to notice the curve of her neck, the grace of her hands as she twisted her hair into place. 

He tried. So hard. It was rude. It was probably a little lascivious. It was definitely not how he wanted to act. Yet he couldn’t seem to pry his gaze away from her. She was beautiful, that was a fact as plain as day. Something he had noticed from the moment she had slipped into his elevator, out of breath and face flushed. 

Phillip shook all those thoughts from his mind. It was pointless anyway, and besides the main thing was that he wasn’t alone. He thought he would be eternally grateful for the fact she had ended up in there with him. Because she had been right: she was very distracting. Even if it wasn’t completely for the reasons she meant. 

That made him wonder, did she know how beautiful she was? Would it be wrong if he told her so? He decided the answer to be yes. 

“So you’ve really never been?” he asked, more now to keep the conversation going than to distract himself from his anxiety. He truly just wanted to talk to her as much as possible. 

“Nope.” She shook her head, dug out a water bottle from her bag and took a sip. She offered it to him with a teasing smile. “You aren’t a germaphobe are you?”

He laughed, and took the bottle. Their fingers touched. “No. Just claustrophobic and prone to anxiety. I’m saving the Howard Hughes stuff until I hit at least forty. I might skip the urine in the jars phase though.”

She giggled, nose crinkling adorably. “Gross.” 

“I said I was skipping it!” He took a sip of water. When he handed back the bottle their fingers touched again. Phillip was almost positive it wasn’t an accident.  “You should go, you know.”

She started slightly, quickly shoved her water bottle back into her bag. “What?” she asked.

“To Cirque du Soleil. I think you would really like it. I’ll take you.” Then he realized what he had said, and that she had only known him a few hours, and suddenly it seemed like the biggest overstep. The biggest presumption. “I mean, that is, if you-if you wanted to go. I could. Take you.”

God, he was an idiot. 

Anne, however -- miraculous as it seemed -- was clearly delighted by the offer. She beamed. “Would you really?” She tilted her head at him.

“Yeah. Of course. It’s really fun, and I know you would enjoy it.” He paused, felt his cheeks grow warm. “It can be a thank you, for helping me stay calm.”

“I’m not sure that’s a fair trade. All I’ve done is babble at you.” She laughed a little, almost nervous. 

“You’ve done a lot. More than you know. Really, it’s the least I can do.” He flashed her a smile, hoped he didn’t seem as awkward as he felt. 

She looked up at him from under her lashes. “All right, Phillip. You can take me to a show. You know, assuming we ever get out of here.”

Phillip gave a short laugh. “Don’t say that.” 

As if that were some kind of karmic cue, the elevator lurched. First jolting upward, although the regular lights didn’t turn back on. There was a pause. Then the whole thing started to plunge downward. 

The elevator stopped so suddenly they both toppled to the floor. Phillip expected the speaker to crackle to life, to hear Charles’ voice sounding from the other end. But everything remained eerily silent. Then the emergency lights went out. Now it complete darkness, with no sense of where anything started or ended, all the walls seemed to close in. 

Logically, Phillip knew there was still air in the elevator, yet that didn’t stop his lungs from seizing, from being unable to draw in enough of the precious oxygen. His heart pounded, like horse hooves beating against his chest. He could feel a cold sweat beading on his brow, as an icy sense of dread settled over him. The nameless, faceless dread that should be so easy to dismiss and yet it was impossible to do so.

Light flared to life, nearly blinding after the total darkness. He blinked to adjust his eyesight, realized it was the light from Anne’s cellphone. He also realized she was now crouched in front of him. She sat her phone aside but kept the light on, and placed gentle hands on either side of his face. 

She smiled softly.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay, Phillip. Everything is going to be fine.” 

Phillip wanted to tell her she was wrong, that he was clearly dying of a heart attack. It sounded so stupid and yet completely reasonable, only he couldn’t find his voice to say any of that. 

He must have looked half crazed or frightened or God knew what, but either way she brushed her thumbs against his cheeks. A soft, comforting gesture. She held his gaze, looking as calm and as peaceful as could be. She might as well have been an angel. 

“Just look at me. You’re okay, nothing is wrong.” She smiled at him again, a little teasing. “Why don’t you tell me about our date.” 

That alone was enough to shock him partially out of his anxious fog. “Date?” he asked. 

“Yeah, it sounded like a date to me.” 

He laughed, a little hysterical. “Okay, it’s a date.” 

“Will you take me out to dinner on our date?” 

“Sure.” He tried to concentrate on breathing, trying to calm his fluttering heart. Although he was no longer sure if that was because of the panic attack or because of Anne. Perhaps both. “Somewhere nice. What do you like?” 

“Anything. I’m not a picky eater.” 

“Um, Per Se?” 

Her eyes widen slightly. “That’s  _really_  fancy, and really expensive.”

Phillip simply shrugged at that. It was, but that was kind of the point. “I have the feeling you’re worth it.” 

Anne glanced down at that, a little embarrassed. “Okay. So fancy dinner and a show. Anything else?” 

“Well, if I’m lucky and I don’t make a complete fool of myself. You might agree to a second date?” 

“I might.” She gave him a bright smile. “We’ll just have to wait and see.” Anne brushed his cheeks again, studied him closely. “Feeling better?” 

“Actually, yes. Thank you.” 

“Do those happen often?” she asked, still crouched in front of him, still cradling his face gently. 

“Not so much now. More when I was younger. Usually I have a better handle on it.” 

“Well, we can all be caught unawares.” Slowly, she began to withdraw from him. He missed her immediately. But soon she settled next to him against the wall, a firm and comforting presence pressed against his side. He was glad.

“You really are taking me on a date, you know.” 

“Good.” 

“Give me your phone.” 

He frowned at her in confusion before reaching for his jacket and retrieving the item. She took it carefully, their fingers brushing once again. This time he was completely certain it was on purpose. 

“Now you’ll have my number.” 

“It is on file.” 

She laughed. “Fine.” She leaned over and plucked up her phone. “Give me your number then.” 

“You know,” he said, punching in the digits. “I don’t give this out to just anyone. At least not my personal one.” 

“Guess I’m special then.” 

He looked up at her. “Yeah, you are.” 

They fell silent then, but it wasn’t awkward. In fact it was oddly comfortable. After a moment Anne dropped her head to his shoulder, threaded her hands around his arm. Almost cuddling against him. He rested his cheek against her hair. All he could smell was her shampoo, light and floral, and enticing. 

It was another moment when the emergency lights were replaced with the florescent bulbs overhead. Blinding them both at the sudden change.

“Oh, god. That’s bright.” Phillip tried to shield his eyes. 

Anne buried her face against his shoulder. “I feel like a mole,” she mumbled against his shirt. 

The elevator started up, moving slower than usual as it moved upward to the nearest floor. It slid to a stop, and the doors dinged open. On the other side were a pack of technicians and maintenance crew, Charles at the forefront. His eyes nearly fell out of his head when spotted them sitting on the floor together.

“No wonder you didn’t want to be rescued, boss.” 

“Shut up, Charles.” 

Phillip and Anne carefully extracted themselves from one another, gathering up their things and still blinking against the harsh lights. 

Anne glanced down at her phone for the time. “Do I... just go up? For the interview?” 

“Yeah.” Phillip withdrew his phone and sent a text. “They’ll be expecting you.” 

“All right,” she laughed. “If you say so, Mister Carlyle.”

“Oh, come on.” 

She was still laughing as she glanced around, before finally looking to Charles. “Which floor are we on?” 

“Seventeen, miss.” 

“Thank god.” She released a huge sigh. “I’m going to take the stairs.” Anne started toward the sign marking the stairwell at the end of the hall, but not before glancing toward Phillip. “I guess I’ll see you later?” 

He could only nod dumbly. She bit her lip, gave him a little smile before continuing on to her interview. She had just pushed open the door when Phillip called out.

“Wait!”

“Yeah?” She looked at him quizzically. 

“W-what about a practice run?” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“Lunch. After your interview? It can be a practice run for later. Make sure it all goes right. That seems important after the elevator.” He wasn’t entirely sure what was making his mouth work. He felt exhausted, completely wrung out after all the anxiety. He also felt nervous, mostly because he knew she was too good for him. And it probably wasn’t his place. That didn’t stop him though. Because he wasn’t remotely ready to say goodbye to Anne yet. 

Her answering smile was bright, nearly as blinding as the overhead lights but more beautiful than anything he could remember ever seeing.  

“Aren’t you sick of me yet?” she teased. 

“Nope.” 

She glanced away shyly, laughed a little bit. “Yeah, okay. Lunch it is. I’ll, uh, text you when I’m done?”

“Sounds great.” 

Phillip watched as she slipped into the stairwell, and kept watching until well after the door had swung shut. He was vaguely aware of Charles stopping at his side.

“You okay, Boss?”

“Yeah. Fine.” He finally tore his gaze away from where Anne had disappeared. “Charles? I think I’m in love.” 


End file.
